memories.html

I joined the Bata Shoe company in 1934 and that time lived with my parents at Grays, Essex in England. The company had only started the year before that in 1933 at East Tilbury, also in Essex. I was 16 at the time and had just left school and I remember before I started work, there had been much written in the Local Paper about the Bata Shoe Company being built at East Tilbury.

Because Jobs were hard to get in those days and much had been said about the jobs it was going to provide for the people in the district. I remember very vividly the day I started with Bata, the factory then consisted of only two small one storey buildings, one was the leather factory and the other the rubber factory where they made wellington boots.

I sat in the foyer of the office waiting for my application for a job to be considered. when the door leading to the factory to the Office burst open and out came this huge fellow in an old battered straw hat, he appeared very agitated and he leaned over the counter in the office, and seeing me sitting there beckoned to me to come forward "Looking for a job boy?" he said and I replied meekly "Yes" "Follow me" he said and lifted the lid of the counter for me to follow him into the factory. I learned later that he was Mr Schmidt, the Managing Director of the Factory, and he himself was doing a recheck of a batch of shoes that had come back and he wanted me to box the shoes again after he had rechecked them. He showed me how to box the shoes and I remember on my first day I worked late into the evening to get that batch of shoes out again. However that was my introduction to the British Bata Shoe Company, which incidentally, was a foreign company from Zlin in Czechoslovakia

My name is Margaret P. Whitfield, I arrived in East Tilbury in September 1947 having been sent from a subsidiary factory in Maryport, Cumbria to do Leather Factory repairs. I was to stay for three weeks, fifty five years later I am still here. At first we were housed in a room above the Bata School, then moved to number one girls hostel, my friend returned home, and I stayed having had permission from my parents to do so. I had gone home in the November to be bridesmaid at my sister's wedding so didn't go back for Christmas, at that time Christmas dinner was served in the downstairs restaurant for all residents of Community House and hostels, many of whom had nowhere else to go. It was at this Christmas dinner I met my husband, at that time the hostel had girls from various locations, in four years I shared with one from the North East, one from Ireland, one from Poland and one from the North West. The rooms were not bad, containing two beds, two wardrobes, lockers and a chair and wash basin. All of our meals were taken in the Canteen, in the evening the Snack Bar did a steady trade in Tea and sandwiches which never varied, "What have you got we would ask?" we would ask, "Cheese, meat and fish" was always the answer, given without disturbing the half inch of as on his cigarette. I lived in the hostel for four years. When we married we managed to get a room in Community House. The rooms were a fair size if a bit Spartan, the rent was 24/6d for the room, meals were paid for weekly, or as taken. At that time there was a Social Secretary and every so often he organized Mystery Trips, we went to Streatham Locarno, Hammersmith Palais, etc. we also had the Cinema, Swimming Pool, Ballroom, Tennis Courts and a Gym on the Top floor of Community House. It was a lifestyle that allowed us to save so that when we were allocated a house in Gloucester Avenue we were ready for it, we were delighted with our house and didn't want to move, but we needed another bedroom so moved to King George VI Avenue, where we have been for 41 years.